Politics this week

Margaret Thatcher died. She was 87. The former British prime minister was lauded for championing the free market, helping to end the cold war, standing up to terrorists, being a good friend to America, and many other things. Her critics derided her as a divisive figure who was callous towards those who lost out in Britain’s industrial makeover. In 1989, the year before she was ousted from power by her own party, she mused that “I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.” See article

Portugal’s constitutional court struck down planned cuts in public-sector pay, pensions and benefits. The government now has to find savings worth €5.3 billion ($7 billion) to keep its bail-out programme on track. The programme is supposed to end in May 2014, but the court’s ruling raises doubts over whether it will. See article

The European Commission warned that Spain and Slovenia must deal quickly with the imbalances in their economies. Spain’s banking system has already been bailed out; Slovenia is expected to become the next euro-zone country to ask for a rescue. See article

The French government said a list of the value of ministers’ assets must be published by April 15th, amid a scandal over tax evasion. It will also present a draft law obliging MPs to declare their assets and introducing tougher penalties for financial fraud. Jérôme Cahuzac, who recently resigned as budget minister, has been charged with fraud over a secret Swiss bank account. See article

Julia Kiraly, a deputy governor of the National Bank of Hungary, stepped down. Her resignation was not unexpected but her very public attack on Gyorgy Matolcsy, the new governor of Hungary’s central bank and a close ally of the prime minister, Viktor Orban, has caused ripples at home and abroad. See article

In Serbia 13 people were shot dead in a village near Belgrade by an unemployed veteran of the Balkan wars who went on a gun rampage.

Walking for peace

In Colombia tens of thousands of people, including President Juan Manuel Santos, marched to support the peace talks between the government and the FARC guerrillas. The talks, which have yet to produce any agreement, have been criticised by Mr Santos’s predecessor, Álvaro Uribe. See article

The IMF and multilateral banks agreed to another bail-out for Jamaica, following the indebted island’s bond restructuring. In return for $2 billion in loans the government has frozen public-sector wages and promised tax reforms.

Forensic scientists in Chile exhumed the remains of Pablo Neruda, a Communist poet who died in hospital in Santiago days after General Pinochet’s military coup in 1973. A judge is investigating a claim by Neruda’s driver that the poet, who suffered from prostate cancer, was poisoned.

Prosecutors in Brazil said they had asked the police to investigate claims that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former president, was involved in a scheme in 2005 to buy congressional votes for which several of his former aides were sentenced to jail. Lula has called the claims a lie.

Uruguay’s Congress voted overwhelmingly to legalise gay marriage, the second country in Latin America, after Argentina, to do so.

Pleasing nobody

Barack Obama unveiled a budget for the 2014 fiscal year. It included a proposal to reduce Social Security payments, but also contained more spending on infrastructure and higher taxes on the rich. The cumulative deficit was forecast at $5.3 trillion over the next decade. Mr Obama claimed his budget was centrist. Republicans in Congress were unimpressed. See article

The Senate started discussing what could be the most far-reaching legislation on gun control in 20 years, though even some Democrats offered tepid support. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, and Patrick Toomey, a Republican, put forward their own bipartisan plan, which includes toughening up background checks on gun buyers. See article

The heavy rattling of sabres

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, warned that the crisis on the Korean peninsula may become “uncontrollable”. He once again urged North Korea to tone down its “provocative rhetoric” and to keep open a joint North-South Korean industrial complex. South Korea raised its alert level to “vital threat” amid indications the North is preparing for a missile test. See article

Chinese state media reported that tourism cruises to a chain of disputed islands in the South China Sea will begin by next month. The islands, known internationally as the Paracels but in Chinese as the Xisha, are claimed by China, Vietnam and Taiwan. Meanwhile, Japan and Taiwan signed a deal to let Taiwanese ships fish near another group of disputed islands, the Senkakus or Diaoyus.

Two more patients infected with the H7N9 strain of bird flu died in China, bringing the total number of deaths to nine. The World Health Organisation said that there is no evidence yet that the virus is being transmitted between people. Live-poultry trading has been banned in the cities of Shanghai and Nanjing. See article

Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, firmly rejected demands by Islamists for a new anti-blasphemy law to punish those who defame Islam. Her comments came after hundreds of thousands of Islamists held a rally in Dhaka calling for the death penalty for blasphemers.

Assad’s enemies united

A spokesman for the Nusra Front, an extreme Islamist group that is prominent in the battle to overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria, said it had merged with al-Qaeda in Iraq, a branch of the group founded by the late Osama bin Laden.

Five United Nations peacekeepers from India and seven foreign civilians in South Sudan were killed by a militia said to be led by David Yau Yau, a leader of the Murle tribe. The South Sudanese government says that Sudan’s government to the north is trying to stir up strife in the breakaway state.

Tammam Salam, a scion of a prominent Sunni family, replaced another Sunni, Najib Mikati, as prime minister of Lebanon. The new man is considered closer to Saudi Arabia and the West and less friendly to Hizbullah, the Shia party-cum-militia, than was his predecessor.